Firewatch celebrated its 10-year anniversary on February 9, 2025. Under, we study the origins of the so-called “strolling simulator” and why the fireplace seems to have died out.
When Firewatch launched on February ninth, 2016, it was straightforward to narrate to the sport’s leads, Henry and Delilah. These characters spent a summer season staring down as hearth unfold, slowly filling the forest round their watchtowers with smoke. Observers of the “strolling sim” style noticed an analogous blaze burn throughout the last decade. It started with Expensive Esther, sparked to scorching flame with the friction of Gone Dwelling’s launch, and have become a towering artistic inferno with trendy classics like Firewatch and What Stays of Edith Finch. Because the 2010s got here to a detailed, followers anticipated the fireplace to proceed raging by means of the ’20s.
As an alternative, it burned out. A decade after Campo Santo launched this deeply human sport about paranoia in a nationwide park, strolling sims have fallen from mainstream prominence. It is not that nobody is making them anymore–there are tiny indies accessible on platforms like itch.io. But the groups that made the defining video games have spun their wheels, bought their studios, or cut up. And The Recreation Awards nominations have dried up, too. Despelote is the one sport within the style to obtain recognition this decade with two nods, in comparison with 5 for Firewatch, three noms and one win for Edith Finch, a Video games for Impression nod for Sundown, and a Finest Impartial Recreation nomination for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter–all in a three-year span. Within the 2010s, yearly or two noticed the discharge of an iconic, extensively mentioned entry, however we’re six years into the 2020s and nonetheless ready.
So what occurred? The place did video games like Firewatch go? The place did they arrive from within the first place? And what even is a strolling simulator anyway?
Firewatch
First Issues First
If you wish to perceive how strolling sims captured gaming’s creativeness within the 2010s, Firewatch is a superb place to start out. Like most titles within the style, it’s a combat-free, story-focused first-person sport a few lone character exploring an unpopulated house. In Firewatch, that house was a largely empty Shoshone Nationwide Park. In Fullbright’s Gone Dwelling, it was an deserted household residence within the Pacific Northwest. In its follow-up, Tacoma, it was an area station within the wake of its crew’s mysterious disappearance.
Isolation was a function, not a bug, however these video games used off-screen characters to melt their inherent loneliness. In The Stanley Parable, a complicated narrator described your each transfer, encouraging or discouraging sure programs of motion. In Tacoma, you watched hologram recordings of the station’s lacking inhabitants. In What Stays of Edith Finch, you grew to become every of the characters who had deserted the sprawling home, enjoying as them by means of brief vignettes.
Firewatch casts gamers as Henry, a person who takes an remoted job at a lookout tower within the Wyoming woods to flee a troublesome marriage. As you discover the forest, compass and map on the prepared, you communicate to your charismatic supervisor, Delilah, by radio. And that, mechanically talking, is mainly it. Firewatch is a superb story with well-realized, flawed, human characters. The few stuff you do are autos for Campo Santo to inform that story.
The style’s lack of mechanical depth made it attainable for indie groups to make video games with excessive manufacturing worth, and that was definitely the case for Firewatch. Although it was made by a small crew–Campo Santo was just 12 developers strong as of 2018–it seemed and appeared like one thing made by a a lot bigger studio. Its artwork fashion was painterly, emphasizing beautiful coloration over realism. Its UI was minimalist however trendy. Its script boasted pages of robust writing; if Henry noticed one thing on this planet, he may pull up his walkie-talkie and Delilah would have one thing to say about it. And although there have been solely two main voice roles, each have been acted to perfection.
Facet word: Although the “strolling simulator” identify has since been used to explain video games like Demise Stranding and Child Steps, which discover and derive problem from the mechanics of strolling, the video games that gave the style its identify weren’t all that keen on strolling. It was simply the primary motion left over as soon as builders stripped out capturing, puzzle-solving, and different acquainted game-y actions.
A Misplaced Technology
The devs that ended up making this sort of sport have been both scaling up or cutting down. Early titles like Expensive Esther and The Stanley Parable began out as Half-Life 2 mods, earlier than their builders reworked them as standalone releases. And Gone Dwelling and Firewatch have been each made by triple-A expats, devs who had left larger studios behind to blaze their very own path. The core Fullbright group began working collectively at 2K Marin whereas making BioShock 2’s Minerva’s Den DLC. And Campo Santo’s Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman each hailed from Telltale, the place that they had helped lead improvement on The Strolling Useless.
Firewatch
With that method, it looks as if strolling sims may proceed to thrive within the 2020s. With widespread layoffs, there are extra unemployed builders with triple-A expertise than ever earlier than. And with established devs having honed their abilities within the 2010s, it appeared affordable to count on them to return within the 2020s with extra superior, extra sophisticated, extra mature expansions of the style.
But that hasn’t been the case. The builders who pioneered the style largely stopped making games–either within the style, or altogether.
Fullbright cut up in two after allegations of poisonous conduct in opposition to co-founder Steve Gaynor. The studio’s strolling sim follow-up, Open Roads, was launched in 2024 beneath the studio identify Open Roads Group. It made little impression and earned middling critiques. Gaynor maintained the rights to the Fullbright identify and has used it for his personal tasks, like 2024’s Fullbright Presents Rest room Spiders–a horror sport about, you guessed it, spiders in bathrooms. His subsequent sport, Springs, Eternal, seems to be extra consistent with the video games that put Fullbright on the map, a PS1-inspired horror title about exploring a “a secluded scorching springs at midnight.” But Fullbright, as we knew it, does not exist anymore.
What Stays of Edith Finch turns 9 this April, however its creator, Big Sparrow, has stated little about its nature-focused subsequent venture since 2017. In line with its barebones web site, it plans to workers up in mid-2026. Davey Wreden, who co-developed The Stanley Parable, made a strolling sim follow-up, The Newbie’s Information, in 2015. Outdoors of small video games launched on itch.io, Wreden was largely quiet till final 12 months’s Wanderstop, a comfy sport. Brendon Chung, who made the small however influential Thirty Flights of Loving reversed the method that led to the creation of the strolling sim, including mechanics again in. His newest, Pores and skin Deep, is an effective, old school immersive sim.
And Campo Santo, which was set to evolve its tackle the style with an Egypt-set first-person journey titled Within the Valley of Gods, was acquired by Valve in 2018. The sport was placed on ice. Its Steam page continues to be up, although its launch date is about to the faraway December 2029 and, so far as we all know, it stays on maintain. That acquisition wasn’t fully unhealthy information. A number of members of the group performed key roles on the superb Half-Life: Alyx. But it does imply {that a} main participant within the style has taken itself off the desk.
The Chinese language Room, which made Expensive Esther, is likely one of the few studios that continues to make first-person adventures. But it has caught to horror with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Nonetheless Wakes the Deep, giving its video games an easier-to-sell style part. It additionally highlights how straightforward it’s to make video games that are not strolling sims. When a style is outlined by what it excludes, it is simple for a sport to iterate its approach out.
We Want A Good, Lengthy Stroll
An inhospitable business hasn’t helped. As talked about above, layoffs have been widespread within the 2020s, with many developers leaving the games industry entirely. The “indiepocalypse” that many feared within the 2010s is right here: The market is overcrowded, and standing out is tougher than ever. Strolling sims have been excessive on manufacturing worth and light-weight on mechanics, however the breakout indies of the 2020s have reversed that method. Balatro, Vampire Survivors, and Megabonk appear to be they might have come out in 1998 however hook gamers with inviting mechanical depth.
Strolling sims, greater than most genres, would profit from business stability. A sport like Firewatch requires endurance to create and endurance to understand. When it launched in 2016, a number of critics in contrast it to a very good e-book. It is not flashy, does not have an enormous high-concept mechanical hook, and will not make gamers say, “Only one extra spherical.” But it rewards your time with a narrative well-told, an abiding sense of environment, and unforgettable characters. If that is not price investing money and time in, what’s?